I repaired the battery door on this camera. The owner had dropped the camera. The plastic hook-shaped pieces in the bottom, that hold shut the battery door, broke off. My repair consisted of inserting two brass pins to replace the plastic parts.

This view shows the bottom of the camera with the battery door open. The little bright dots on the left side of the battery compartment are the brass pins that I installed.

These are the brass pins. I used a lathe and turned down brass screws to make the 1/16″ pins and tapered them slightly. Had I had more time, I could have bought a piece of brass rod the right size, and I would not have needed to turn something on a lathe. But the owner was leaving for a vacation the next day, so I made the pins out of brass screws that I had on hand.

Where to place the pins exactly? In three steps, I transferred the location from a known reference. Starting from the door’s grooves that mated with the lost plastic hooks, I transferred the location from the side of the door to the outside of the door. Then I closed the door and copied the mark across the seam to the camera body. I drilled the camera body to receive the pins, taking an educated gamble that Kodak, and Flextronics, did not put any circuitry into the shell at that location. That seems to have worked out. I used a simple drill that is just a straight handle that holds the bit, and turned it one rotation at a time. I kept drilling until the bit raised the tiny bumps that you can see on the outside of the camera in line with the pins.

Once I could place the pins, I shaped them by filing flats on them so that they would slide into the grooves on the door. I actually eyeballed the pins in place each time. Then I pulled out the pins and did the filing away from the camera, so the fine metal dust did not fall into the camera.

Once the pins fit in place and the door closed properly, I cleaned the pins with alcohol. I mixed up five-minute epoxy and glued the pins in place. I cleaned up the excess epoxy as well as I could.